"Hreapha," Her Dog Will Say

Donald Harington died this past Saturday. Longtimers have heard me yodel about Harington for years (the latest is here - use the lijit search function down on the right to see more).

I had planned, knowing that Harington was dying and that Enduring would be the last Stay More novel, to reread all the novels in Harington's Stay More universe, because all the novels are themselves chapters in a much larger project, and Enduring is the final chapter: when Harington's echo-bombs POP! and the universe expands even further into the Kind because a POP! set six novels ago POPS! in Enduring, I want the full and joyous POP!

Because I'm loud, I always think of the infinite in terms of bigger bigger. Harington is interested in the smaller smaller, an entire system as small as the infinite, transparent not opaque, magical, showing the gears, with a generous and uncanny and FUNNY! disdain for deliberate obscurity for complexity's sake: it's not Pynchon, Barth, or Elkin who finally convinced me I wasn't a novelist. And it was Harington that taught me about faith based on Kind.

There's a scene in With when Robin's animals - led by Hreapha the dog (one of the greatest, truest characters ever) - steal bottles of Jack Daniels to... 

That's the obit. I'm starting Architecture, the central cedar pole of the Stay More universe, as soon as I finish what I'm in, and go. When I finish Enduring, I'll yodel. Or not.

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Well, that was interesting. Thanks for comments and emails.

I can't make any promises about what comes out of my mouth when Cuauhtemoc Blanco dives and rolls around in fake agony right in front of me, and I will never fucking promise to fucking stop cursing, but I understand people I like and respect have suggested and/or asked me to stop using that word, and because I like and respect them I will.

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• I do solicit a new one-word term for Ramesh Ponnuru.
• Veteran's Day.
• Gitmo gets worse?
• David Brooks, fuckwit.
• David Brooks, fuckwitted plagiarist.
• The symbiosis between fuckwits and fuckwads.
• What Obama won't investigate next.
• Empire fools.
• Graveyard of Empires.
• Shitwit.
• We can agree Dickarmey is a shitpig, but what do we call Democrats who don't call Dickarmey on his shitpiggery?
• UPDATE! Blue Dogs.
• UPDATE! Something for Kucinich admirers to consider.
• Hirsute abyss of God's little oven, or: the difference between a Conservative and a Republican.
• What's the Frequency, Kravchenko?
• Right there, right then.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your photoshop of the day.
• Can't have lived in MOCO in 2002 and not note this. One of the first shootings was at the Shell in Kensington half-a-mile from my house. We were scared shitless. I remember crouching behind my car during the spree when I absolutely had to put gas in my car. I do not support Muhammad's execution - there's a reason he was sentenced in Virginia.
• Tim Kaine, murderer.
• UPDATE! Potomac River = TOXIC STEW!
• Future MOCO.
• Future MOCO.
• UPDATE! Riggooofdah!
• Carl Ballantine, RIP.

• Bolaño Inc.
• New Millhauser story.
• Two new Lauterbach poems.
• Britain's Borders.
• Who should replace Steven Tyler in Aerosmith?
• Bruce McCulloch!
• Because you can't kill rock and roll.
• KEXP's generous MP3s of this week's releases.
• They're never happy less they got a war.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Please to bend down to the one called the Green Man.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• She's a little lighthouse.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Some star sneezed, now they're paging you in Reception.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• There may be no golden fleece, but human riches I'll release.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• But he made too many enemies of the people who would keep us on our knees.

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THE SILKEN TENT

Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

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Fifty-six today: